Sun's Third Reflection Who benefits from Technology in the Classroom!

Q:

    Do you think that the integration of technology is really a racket to make money for business?Does movements to use more technology in classrooms have our students' best interests in mind?

A:

    It is no bout that technology has become an indispensible part of our lives. And I could not imagine what life will be like without technology. I believe it is an irreversible trend that technology will penetrate in every possible walks of life. And I tend to agree that the integration of technology does serve as a rocket to make money for business. As we can see, almost all the classrooms are computerized or digitalized at OU, not to mention that there are thousands of schools in the U.S. and there are millions of schools around the world. Moreover, there are so much research done to prove that the benefit of embedding technology into teaching. Therefore, whether a school is taking advantage of technology has become a criteria to judge the school's quality. Under such a spur, no school wants to take the risk of being left behind. However, whether these producers take students'  benifit into the first place while inventing a new tech, we can not tell. But at least, these producers will not invent something stupid to cut off their money sources.

     As a L2 teacher, I do feel that technology faciliate teaching efficiency to a large extent. Nevertheless, it seems teachers are so controlled by technology that once they come across some situations such as black-out, they have no idea have to carry on their teaching. At least, I feel that way. One of the points stood out to me in this article is that "Many would-be educational innovators treat technology as an end-all and be-all, making no effort to figure out how to integrate it into the classroom."  In fact, it is the essence of the problem that people tend to use blindly withou thinking how to make technology best for teaching. We are on a long way to figure that out. 

Sun's Second Reflection

Q:  

    What do you need to work on? Part of becoming a better technology using teaching is doing a self assessment of your skills..  what are some areas that you need to work on to make more meaningful use of technology in your job.  If you are not sure how to answer this.. ask your coworkers or fellow students - they might be able to tell you..Make sure to tell me, why it limits you, or your teaching..

A:

    Technology is definitely one of the sweet-bitter human inventions in the world. Sweet is because it has changed our life so drastically. Just by pressing the buttons we can converse with the people millions miles away; Just by pressing the buttons we can see the latest news happened around the world; Just by pressing the buttons we can purchase anything we want. How magical the technology is. What is more important, the change that the technology brings to us is way beyond our expectation, and it will continue to change our life in a substantial better way. Bitter is due to its side-effects it has had on people. More and more people are turning to couch-potatoes; More and more people cast the books away by killing time online; More and more people tend to think their lives are living without the technology. It seems we are technologically confined. 

       As a teacher with three years' teaching experience, I have to confess that I have a hate and love affection towards technology as well.  Loving it is because technology opens a brand-new door in the realm of modern education. Technology inspires us and motivates us to break the traditional methodology by incorporating both technological skills and  products into teaching. That is why I would like to use computer-assisted classroom to carry out my instruction, for the sake of the diversity that the computers offer. What is more, I love it is because technology can surpass the limitations of time and space. For example, via Skype, I can teach American kids Mandarin wherever I am. Hating it is due to the fact that there are numerous new technology emerging now and then, which put teachers in a dilemma. Which technology is better for classroom instruction; which technology may have some side-effects on students; which technology is definitely harmful to students; etc. Moreover, as teaching is more technologicalized, teachers are under huge pressure too, such as curriculum redesign, textbook adaptation, technology evaluation, and so on concerning applying technology into teaching. It seems technology is a burden to teachers.

       As to the question, what do i need to work on? I believe I should try to be more innovative and observant. Nowadays, what we lack is not about the ideas of creating new fancy stuff, but truly what we are lacking of is  the way how to put the new technology into application, and how to invent more educationally orientated technology to assist education. Therefore, as a teaching not majored in science, what i can do now is to take the advantage of the current technology and try to blend it into my foreign language teaching. In addition to that, I must do more cross-discipline classroom observations and learn from teachers in different disciplines. Last but least, teaching evaluation. Not only should I do evaluation by myself, but also I should invite other teachers to observe and evaluate my class. In this way, I will learning  he shortcomings that i might not be able to notice by myself.